There is a great desire for sports news and information among teams, players, and fans at all competitive levels including professional, semi-professional, collegiate, high school, and amateur. The size of the audience decreases exponentially, however, as the level of competition decreases. For instance, any given professional team may have an audience of several million (via game attendance, television and radio broadcasts, and print reporting of the events), whereas at the other end of the spectrum, a typical neighborhood amateur team may have an audience of perhaps ten to forty people.
Because of the large potential audience for professional sports events, a relatively large amount of money is available for collecting and reporting on the event. Entire industries have grown around television reporting and print reporting of professional sports teams, and upon gathering, organizing and disseminating events data and statistics regarding the various leagues, teams, and players. Because of the large audience base, collecting and disseminating professional sports events data is a lucrative industry, when the costs of gathering and reporting the event data is spread across the audience base.
By contrast, with an audience base in the tens or perhaps at most the hundreds, the cost of collecting, analyzing and reporting on a typical amateur sports team event would be prohibitive. Few amateur sports teams fans would be willing to spend hundreds or perhaps thousands of dollars to support a system for collecting and reporting the data.
Some amateur sports organizations have attempted to rely upon a volunteer workforce to minimize the cost of collecting and reporting sports event data. Oftentimes one or more parents of an amateur sports participant, or some other interested volunteer, will offer his or her services in going to the sports event and recording the important events, such as goals or runs scored, final score and the like, and in preparing a periodical newsletter with relevant team or league information. Such a system, while relatively inexpensive, seldom provides satisfactory results. The reliability of the volunteer workforce is uncertain, inconsistent or incorrect scores and event data may be reported, and the time required for a volunteer to analyze, prepare and disseminate the data is oftentimes too onerous to justify the results. Also, the costs associated with printing and distributing the newsletter, and the time involved, means that the reporting of amateur events is often infrequent and not timely.
The advent of the Internet has provided an avenue whereby a limited audience can receive timely access to information at a relatively reduced cost. One example of a volunteer-based amateur event reporting system is provided for at www.instasports.com. This system provides a web site on which interested fans can access information regarding their local high school amateur athletic teams. The information available, however, is limited to the information that a volunteer workforce (i.e. parents or other interested persons) are able to provide by manually recording important data about the sports events, and then manually providing that information to the web site manager. A review of the referenced web site reveals that a significant amount of the league, team, and player information that is contemplated as being available on the web site is simply unavailable because the information has not been provided to the web site manager, or else has not been placed on the web site by the manager.
Another shortcoming to the instasports.com web site is that, whereas some statistical data regarding a selected game may or may not be available, nowhere does the site provide a clear written or spoken narrative of the game. For that type of information, an interested audience member must still rely upon traditional media such as local television news reporting or local print media. Obviously, however, only a very small fraction of amateur sports events are covered by traditional media, especially in more populated metropolitan areas where television air time and print space is at a premium.
Therefore, a need exists in the art for a system whereby information relating to an amateur sports event (or a similar event in which a relatively small audience has an interest in the statistical analysis of the event or about highlights of the event) can be collected, analyzed, and reported back to the audience in an automated, timely manner, and at a relatively low cost (on a per capita basis). The need also exists for such a system that can provide not only statistical reporting, but that can also provide for a narrative account of the sports event written in a manner that is both informative and entertaining, such as is commonly available for professional sports events (via television and print media) with larger audiences.
The present invention meets the existing needs in the art, as will be explained in detail in the following detailed description of certain preferred embodiments of the invention.